Qatar’s biggest meat company Widam starts work on new facilities

Qatar’s Widam Food Company has started the construction of a new slaughterhouse that it says has a capacity to take on 600 heads of livestock per day.

The company said in a statement on Tuesday (Mar 3) that the Al Shahaniya Slaughterhouse Project will cost 15 million rials ($4.12 million).

The new facility will be completed “as soon as possible and within this year”, said Widam without disclosing a precise date.

At the same time, Widam has completed the design and contractual requirements to build an operations zone to substitute its old one in the Abu Hammour district in Doha.

“This Project includes a production and meat processing unit, and barns to house the large number of imported livestock,” said the leading livestock and red meat supplier in Qatar.

Widam said it has set aside 130 million rials for the build and preparatory works. The project is located in the southern part of Qatar.

Widam’s core business is the import and trade of livestock, meat and feeds. It also operates slaughterhouses for sheep and cattle, and supplies the local market with fresh meat and related products.

Widam in January started managing and operating Qatar’s newest and biggest automated slaughterhouse that has the capacity to reach up to 9,000 heads of livestock a day, reported local daily Qatar Tribune.

Widam exclusively handles the Qatar government’s subsidisation of Australian meat. It also imports meats from other markets on a non-exclusive basis.

It made a net profit of 78.39 million rials ($21.5 million) in 2019, a drop from 108.39 million rials ($29.77 million) in 2018. The company attributes the fall to discontinued operations of biological assets amounting to 20.1 million rials,  decrease in the quantity sold of Australian meat that resulted in a drop in government compensation from 565.7 million rials to 480 million rials, and expenses to move from an automated slaughterhouse to another location.

Qatar imported $283.5 million in live animals in 2018, the most recently available data from the U.N. Comtrade. According to Widam, it covers 85% of Qatar's market needs for red meat. 

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